More boiler problems - now it's worse - what should the compensation be?

"The element was removed from the boiler" is this electric or gas ? as theres no element in gas .. it should be a heat plate ..
 
gc123 said:
depends if the landlord asked for it? if he was told boiler is x amount and we strongly suggest fitting this filter at another x amount, then he probably cheaped out. his problem not yours.
has he given you an idea of what compensation?
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Not yet, still waiting for that.
 
Just did a quick google, as our company doesnt deal in electric combi's. The brands, I've never heard of. With only 2 years warranty. 24Kw seems to be the max, which only allows 11l/min@30C compared to a very average gas 30kw with 14.5l/min @ 30C

But (again a quick google) Gas is 3 to 4 times cheaper than electric!! for the same Kwh

Stick with gas thanks :D
 
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£100/mo doesn't seem bad.

Odd they only gave you an electric boiler and not heating oil though.
 
A water filter won't do diddly to stop limescale. You want either a polarisation system or water softener.
 
dLockers said:
£100/mo doesn't seem bad.

Odd they only gave you an electric boiler and not heating oil though.
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I guess the issue with oil is that it's not massively convenient, whereas all properties have an easily accessible heating supply. Also, the landlord is either ignorant or a douchebag. Electric heating is one of the worst pieces of technology to be forced upon us in recent years. And guess who always foots the bill - not the contractor who chooses to install it!

For a couple I would have thought about £30/mo in gas for heating would be realistic, so OP is paying 3-4x the going rate.

Edit: just reading about oil a little bit, it seems very good. There must be some sort of catch though. Probably the bit where you need to keep buying oil.
 
dirtychinchilla said:
I guess the issue with oil is that it's not massively convenient, whereas all properties have an easily accessible heating supply. Also, the landlord is either ignorant or a douchebag. Electric heating is one of the worst pieces of technology to be forced upon us in recent years. And guess who always foots the bill - not the contractor who chooses to install it!

For a couple I would have thought about £30/mo in gas for heating would be realistic, so OP is paying 3-4x the going rate.

Edit: just reading about oil a little bit, it seems very good. There must be some sort of catch though. Probably the bit where you need to keep buying oil.
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I was having dinner with a colleague when he was telling me about it. I have only ever lived in gas main connected houses so I was hanging off every word at "how the other half live". He said as long as you get it topped up in summer, it is very cost effective. This was in December and due to a string of unforeseen events he had forgotten and his wife was texting him saying the heating won't come on :p

I think he said he paid £1700 in the depths of winter for a tank full (buried in his garden) that'll last the entire year. Typically he said he would pay £1300-1400.

This is a massive 4 bed new build, so seemed very reasonable.
 
dLockers said:
I was having dinner with a colleague when he was telling me about it. I have only ever lived in gas main connected houses so I was hanging off every word at "how the other half live". He said as long as you get it topped up in summer, it is very cost effective. This was in December and due to a string of unforeseen events he had forgotten and his wife was texting him saying the heating won't come on :p

I think he said he paid £1700 in the depths of winter for a tank full (buried in his garden) that'll last the entire year. Typically he said he would pay £1300-1400.

This is a massive 4 bed new build, so seemed very reasonable.
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That is surprisingly reasonable. Definitely painful if you forget! Nothing worse than a cold wife.
 
Actually seems a bit on the high side to me - we get through just over 2x ~700L deliveries of oil a year, at approx. £300 a time, with multiple people in a reasonably large 5 bedroom house inc. 2x power showers heated from the boiler. A colder year maybe push that to 3x. We do tend to be a touch on the conservative side and don't heat the house for the fun of it though - I know some people just like to keep the house good and warm all the time especially older people.
 
An update on this - the landlord wrote with his offer of compensation, and it was exactly as I had predicted in post #5. So that's fine.

After the boiler was 'fixed' on Monday the pipe around the limescale inhibitor started leaking. Turns out the 'workman' hadn't used PTFE tape.

Now, I'm no expert by any stretch, but isn't PTFE tape obvious for something like this?

Needless to say my wife and I are both very annoyed and upset over the whole experience. Not least because we wrote him an email about the situation imploring him not to use shoddy workmen and he just ignored our concerns and dismissed them as being overly dramatic [the 'workman' has had to return three times since the boiler was installed - imagine not using a limescale inhibitor for a London property]. I think he just has a lot of money and uses whoever he wants and doesn't care what anyone else says.

Dis86 said:
A water filter won't do diddly to stop limescale. You want either a polarisation system or water softener.
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He installed an electrolytic compression scale inhibitor. This is correct, is it not?
 
Lysander said:
An update on this - the landlord wrote with his offer of compensation, and it was exactly as I had predicted in post #5. So that's fine.

After the boiler was 'fixed' on Monday the pipe around the limescale inhibitor started leaking. Turns out the 'workman' hadn't used PTFE tape.

Now, I'm no expert by any stretch, but isn't PTFE tape obvious for something like this?

Needless to say my wife and I are both very annoyed and upset over the whole experience. Not least because we wrote him an email about the situation imploring him not to use shoddy workmen and he just ignored our concerns and dismissed them as being overly dramatic [the 'workman' has had to return three times since the boiler was installed - imagine not using a limescale inhibitor for a London property]. I think he just has a lot of money and uses whoever he wants and doesn't care what anyone else says.



He installed an electrolytic compression scale inhibitor. This is correct, is it not?
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Glad you got the compensation you wanted.

Unfortunately i don't think you'll have much luck trying to persuade your LL to use a better tradesman. He's likely got the guy on a "mates rates" and is happy that it's probably cheaper paying for the various callouts than paying for a decent plumber once to do a good job.

All you can do is keep complaining when something breaks. Make sure you take pictures as well in case leaking water causes damages to carpet/flooring.

When we were renting a flat we had a nightmare with the plumbing. Over a 3 year stay i reckon we had a plumber out about 15 times or so. Not for the same thing, was a mixture of leaking pipe to toilet, leaking boiler, immersion element in boiler had gone, flush needed changing. Whoever installed the plumbing did a right bodge job. The cistern for the toilet was glued to the wall at a slight angle rather than bolted to it. This caused a strain on the pipe that filled the cistern to eventually work a leak.
 
^ as above. The landlord will have someone on payroll, who will be a dirt cheap odd job man.

PTFE is only required if the thread makes the seal IIRC - so if there is a typical olive/compression fitting, it sounds like it just needs nipping up or the bloke didn't bother to replace the olive.
 
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